Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I am sharing time with Deputies Paul Murphy and Barry.

Last week the victims of the mother and baby home scandal were insulted. The insult centred on the Government's refusal to value the direct testimony of those victims and instead to follow an official narrative from institutions. This week we have the same pattern of insulting the student nurses and midwives, refusing to listen to their direct testimony and instead listening to the official and, quite honestly, dishonest narrative that it is getting from the health authorities about what they do.

Hundreds of student nurses had their testimonies read out and circulated all over social media.

They attended meetings where they spelled out what was happening in detail. People Before Profit brought a motion last year calling for the payment of student nurses and midwives. The Minister for Health simply dismissed that testimony. The testimony continues to come in, however. It explains, sometimes in shocking and graphic detail, the work the student nurses and midwives do, the risks they take and the pivotal role they play and have always played - not just during the Covid-19 crisis - in making up for chronic staff shortages and working during their placements. Instead of acknowledging and respecting that testimony, the Government insults those student nurses and midwives by suggesting that it is protecting their education.

To be honest, I nearly choked when I heard the Minister speaking again about protecting their education and referring to the "full student experience". How can the Minister trot out those phrases again? For student nurses and midwives, the "full student experience" is paying fees of €3,000, or €7,000 in some cases, for the privilege of working on the front line of our health services. That is even more the case in these dire conditions of the pandemic, when they are playing a critical role in helping us to combat the virus. The Minister, because he was forced, then offered them a miserable €2.50 an hour for the work they do, in the same week that he bumped up the salary of Secretary General of the Department of Health from €210,000 to €290,000.

It is shameful and an insult on so many different levels. It is an insult to women. I do not believe it is a coincidence that this involves a mostly female profession. It is an insult to students to treat them in this way. It is also an insult to young people, as Deputy Cairns said, 70% of whom have said that they are seriously considering leaving the profession, and many will leave after their training because they are treated so badly. They are treated badly as students, and then they will also be treated badly when they come to work in the health service. Nurses are being made to work free hours in the form of the Croke Park hours, when they are fighting to protect all our lives on the front line. The Minister offers these student nurses and midwives an allowance that will not even pay their bus fares or parking costs, in most cases. It is an absolute insult.

I disagree with Deputy Cullinane when he says that he does not want to fundamentally change the structure of nurse training. We need to do that to stop the drain of talented nurses and midwives out of this country that is happening now. In Britain, the Government was forced to acknowledge that it needed to pay student nurses £10,000 a year because of the drain of nurses out of the NHS and out of Britain. We should be doing that too. When the Minister says it is not possible to pay the student nurses and midwives and for them to have a degree, as I pointed out to him last week construction engineers get paid €12 an hour for doing their degrees. Student paramedics get paid, in some cases, €28,000 a year for doing their degrees. It can be done, therefore, and it should be done. Fees should also be abolished, not just for the student nurses and midwives, but for all students.

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